


In a Yellow Wood

by hotrodngold (Krystalicekitsu)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Canon - Movie, Choices, Confessions, Difficult Decisions, F/M, Gen, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krystalicekitsu/pseuds/hotrodngold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers, recalls, thinks Rhodey might've talked to him- about a quote that went something like, boiled down, 'moments where you can see the split in the path you have to choose to take'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Yellow Wood

"The truth is…"

Tony takes one look out at the sea of reporters before him. 

One long look. 

To his left is darling Miss Christine Everheart in a lovely cream power suit, pleasant and perfected smile curling like the Cheshire cat around eyes of blue ice. Three rows back is the young man from the Times- New York or LA, he can never remember- who he discreetly fucked over his own desk while doing an interview on micro-motor servers and their applications in medical science. In the front is the sweet young woman that had shared a tumble into a couch with him when she was just a lovely little intern and-

Tony takes a moment.

He remembers, recalls, thinks Rhodey might've talked to him- about a quote that went something like, boiled down, 'moments where you can see the split in the path you have to choose to take'.

Tony takes that moment.

And it's as he's standing there, in his moment, that he looks across the crowd. He can count not on one hand or two or all his digits but a lot more than that, the number of people he's slept with in this room. He can look out and find that it's actually easier to count the number of people he _hasn't_ slept with and-

And absolutely none of them know anything about him besides what they write for the morning edition.

The moment stretches on, and it's heavy so very heavy and he's so, so tired of hiding and deflecting, of being just the pretty, rich playboy who sometimes invents better things to blow people up with.

He's so sick of everyone hating the mask he throws at them.

They can't even do him the curtsey of hating _him_.

He stares at the split in the path, the main branch continuing as it ever did. He could stop stalling, stop stumbling and stick to the cards, stick to the rich, pretty playboy who doesn't blow people up anymore but still gets drunk at parties and sleeps with anyone who will have him and hey, once in a while piss off his board of directors again, there's a thought. 

He could slip back into his lying second skin.

His attentions shifts to the smaller path.

It's narrow, tiny, miniscule, hardly there, little more than a rivet dug into the dry riverbed that was, probably, at one point, his life, cutting out sideways, starkly- ha- from the main full-speed-and-Ray-Ban's-ahead autobahn kicking up dust and dirt in his life.

He can barely see more than the split it veers off in.

But.

But he couldn't hide there.

It's so small, he'd have to tread so very carefully, there wouldn't be time for meaningless dust. He'd have to check his course carefully. He'd have to be responsible because people would expect him to be responsible and the entire thing would just collapse in an epic failure of architectural and mechanical proportions if he wasn't responsible.

Time's so slow and he examines each path, the old and the new, the comfortable and the unexplored, fights to see further into that tiny, threading path but can't make out much at all because of the lingering dust still in the air.

Tony glances down at the cue cards. Sees Ms Everheart shift in her seat.

Coulson's cards are very linear and precise.

Tony looks up.

The moment is gone.

"I am Iron Man."


End file.
